Debunking Trans Myths episode 2: Second puberty
The myth:
“I’m going through second puberty! Girls grow breasts when they go through puberty, and I’m growing breasts, so I’m going through another puberty uwu!”
The truth:
No, you’re not. Puberty includes the growth of breasts in young females, but breast growth is but an element of a much larger developmental process that involves the entire body.
Puberty, in essence, is the development of a child into a fully-grown, sexually mature adult.
In girls it includes the growth of breasts and the beginning of menstruation, which signals fertility. Her uterus will continue to mature for several years in preparation for eventual pregnancy, and the labia will develop and sometimes darken slightly in color.
In boys it includes penile and testicular growth, their maturation allowing for the production and ejaculation of sperm.
In both sexes puberty includes the attainment of adult height, the fusing of bone plates, the growth of internal organs, and the maturation of the brain, allowing for informed decision-making.
A fully-grown, fertile adult male cannot go through puberty again. His has already occurred, and is responsible for his aforementioned sexually mature, adult body, and his higher-than-sixth grade intelligence level. That’s the main goal of puberty - to change a child into a fertile adult. Adding artificially-high levels of a hormone that a male body is not supposed to produce in such quantities can certainly trick his dormant mammary glands into growing, but that’s pretty much as far as the alterations can go. As stated in Trans Myths, part 1, development cannot occur backwards. What an estrogenized male might believe is his penis attempting to “un-develop” into a vagina, is merely his male organ being starved of the male hormones it needs to stay healthy, thus losing its elasticity, and subsequently developing micro tears in the skin that weep serous fluid.
The estrogen itself isn’t having any effect on the organs that are exclusively male. It can certainly signal the mammary glands to develop, because those are glands that males and females happen to share. It can possibly lead to softer skin, again because skin is an organ that females and males share. The penis and testicles, however, aren’t shrinking in direct response to the high levels of estrogen, but to the low or nonexistent testosterone, which can be suppressed by antiandrogens, castration, or by extremely high doses of estrogen.
In short, an adult male taking estrogen and experiencing physical changes isn’t going through a female puberty, as physical maturation can only happen once. The non-sex-specific parts of his body can be induced to undergo limited changes, which in no way amount to puberty, and his exclusively-male organs can only become sick and wither away in response to deprivation of the one hormone they need to be healthy. That, again, is not puberty.